On November 3, 2021 Guardant Health, Inc. (Nasdaq: GH), a leading precision oncology company, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, one of the United Kingdom’s (UK) leading cancer research organizations, reported that they have agreed to enter into a partnership to establish an in-house liquid biopsy testing service using Guardant Health’s industry-leading proprietary digital sequencing platform (Press release, Guardant Health, NOV 3, 2021, View Source [SID1234594275]).
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The service is expected to become operational at the end of 2022 and will be available for clinical research and clinical care. This will be the first UK hospital for Guardant Health to house a dedicated liquid biopsy testing facility for cancer diagnostics.
"We are delighted to announce this partnership with Guardant Health, establishing a state-of-the-art liquid biopsy testing facility. In a clinical diagnostic setting, it will provide many of our patients with more rapid access to bespoke diagnostic testing, leading to earlier, faster, and more accurate diagnosis, along with targeted treatment selection and monitoring," said Professor Michael Hubank, Director of Clinical Genomics (Research) at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. "The opening of this service will also allow us to significantly increase our capacity for research using liquid biopsies. Bringing expanded capacity for genomic testing, the facility will help us identify more people with cancer for clinical trials based on targeted treatments, improving outcomes for patients across the UK and beyond."
It is estimated that there were around 375,000 new cancer cases in the UK from 2016-20181, with approximately 166,000 cancer deaths in the UK from 2016-2018.1 Guardant Health’s tests are used by oncologists around the world to guide treatment decisions across solid tumor cancers, and by pharmaceutical companies and academic researchers in clinical trials to accelerate precision medicine drug development. Guardant Health has achieved CE Mark and U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for its Guardant360 CDx assay for tumor mutation profiling, also known as comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP), in patients with any solid cancerous tumor.
"We are pleased to announce this partnership with The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, which will enable clinicians to quickly and accurately detect relevant tumor alterations with a blood test to guide personalized treatment plans and provide researchers with diagnostic tools to support clinical research and innovation," said Helmy Eltoukhy, Guardant Health Co-CEO. "This partnership further advances our goal of ensuring all patients with cancer have access to the latest innovations to inform their treatment management to enable the best possible outcomes."